Chapter 5090 — Impossible!
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
At the mountain gate deep in the Shennongjia, Xin Yi'an's first act upon his return was to report to the Antiquity Alliance. Though he had given Wei Zhao his word that he would step forward and mediate, a matter of this kind was not his alone to decide—he would have to seek instructions from above, or else his authority would be unfounded and the disciples of so many Antiquity sects might well refuse to heed him.
There was, moreover, another matter of even greater weight for Xin Yi'an: he had to report the business of Wei Zhao to the Cangwu Sect of the Northern Isle. To have encountered in the mundane world an ancestral elder of their own sect—that was a great event for the entire Cangwu Sect of the Northern Isle.
Above all, Wei Zhao could still recite the whole of the original Qingyun Pingxin Formula from memory, and to the Cangwu Sect of the Northern Isle, stripped of its foundations after the upheavals, that was of extraordinary significance. And if Wei Zhao still recalled the oral formulas of other high-grade cultivation methods, their value would be beyond all reckoning.
For a matter this great, the best way to report it was of course to speak in person, and now that the Antiquity Passage had opened, the conditions for it did exist—yet Xin Yi'an lacked the nerve. It was not that he did not wish to; he simply had only so many spirit jades to his name.
One had to understand that transmitting a single person through required no small quantity of spirit jade, and in the Antiquity's little martial world this substance was exceedingly scarce. Even Xin Yi'an, a sect elder, seldom got his hands on a few pieces. To use them up merely to deliver a message would be a wanton waste of heaven's bounty. So, after much turning it over in his mind, the best course was to send in only two letters—one to the Antiquity Alliance and one to the Cangwu Sect of the Northern Isle—which would require but a single small piece of spirit jade.
A day later, word came back from the Antiquity Alliance: in principle they approved Xin Yi'an's proposal. After all, all they needed was to successfully recruit disciples of outstanding aptitude, and they had never harbored any intention of making enemies of the mundane world. Xin Yi'an's approach suited their requirements precisely.
If, on the other hand, the disciples of the various sects were simply left to do as they pleased, the situation would inevitably spiral out of control, until the whole Antiquity Alliance became loathed by gods and men alike—and that would be a fine mess indeed.
As for the Cangwu Sect of the Northern Isle, no reply had yet come. For one thing, the Northern Isle lay rather far from the Antiquity Passage; for another, a matter of such magnitude would certainly require the entire sect to deliberate for some time, and no result could be expected in the short term.
With the Antiquity Alliance's approval in hand, Xin Yi'an at once issued a summons to the senior brothers leading each sect who remained garrisoned at the mountain gate, ordering them to recall their sects' training disciples to the Shennongjia. Though these lead disciples harbored doubts, once they saw the Alliance's written approval in Xin Yi'an's hand, they chose to comply.
Several days later, the training disciples scattered across the mundane world returned one after another to the Shennongjia, and just as at the start of the training, they gathered on the open ground of the square, waiting for Xin Yi'an to address them.